Episode: 1223
Title: HPR1223: How I got into linux
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1223/hpr1223.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 21:55:09

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Hello NPR listeners, my name is Jezra and today I'm going to be telling you how I got into Linux.
In the late 90s I was running Windows because well that's just kind of what I had and
I really wanted to customize the UI of my computer. I owned the computer, it was my computer,
I wanted it to look the way I wanted it to look and if you've run Windows you know that
you will be running Windows the way someone else wants it to look, the way someone else wants
it to behave and that's not quite my style. So I did a little searching on the internet
and I saw all of these neat themes and designs and colors for this thing called Linux and at
the time I had no idea what Linux was, I didn't know what an MP3 was, I didn't know very much
but I learned some stuff, anyhow back to the story. So I went looking around and I found
Corel Linux, this was about the late 1999 and I downloaded Corel Linux it took about forever,
it was a few floppy drives worth of data and I was downloading over a dial up connection.
If you've never downloaded a Linux distribution over a dial up connection then you're a young
whipper snapper get off my lawn back to the story. So I installed Corel Linux and it was okay,
it was definitely different than what I was used to and I couldn't exactly do everything I wanted
to do granted it's been a few years so I can't exactly remember what I wanted to do but anyhow I had
to switch. So after Corel Linux I tried installing Red Hat and by try I mean I did however Red Hat
had no support at the time to hotplug my why the fuck is it raining in my place?
Hold on, Niauli, hush!
Did I ask for the time you crazy computers? Oh man let me tell you, computers they are crazy and
they will ruin your lives. Now let's see where was I. First a disclaimer. When you were recording
audio for any reason and you happen to have voice recognition software running on a computer
sitting next to you turn it off because there's a good chance that for some unknown reason while
you are talking into the microphone to record for HPR something else will be picking up your voice
and decide to play a rainstorm on your media machine and then you'll swear at it and it will tell
you the time. This is not the ideal situation for recording audio. Now again back to the story.
I had installed Red Hat onto my computer at the time which was named Shy Halood. Shy Halood still
exists because the worm falls apart and becomes the little maker which becomes another great worm
anyhow. So Red Hat was installed. There was at the time no hot plug support for the external hard drive
that I had. I believe it was fire wire and that was a big problem for me. I had a lot of data on
this external hard drive then I just wanted to plug it in and go. Things didn't really work for
me. So I went back to Windows and I used Windows for a couple of years. Then around 2004 I heard
about this thing called Ubuntu Warty Warthog and it was a Linux distribution apparently designed
for humans. So I installed it and I'm a human and it worked and it worked as I needed it to.
Probably it worked as designed and it allowed me to access my external hard drive. That was a big
win. So at the time I was dual booting between Microsoft Windows and Ubuntu and I found myself
booting into Windows less and less to do the things that I needed to do. Basically the only
thing I was doing while booting into Windows was playing a game. The only reason I used Windows
at all was to play a game and eventually I finished the game and at that time I decided to make
the switch full time to Linux and specifically I was using Ubuntu and I went on to the internet
and learned more about this thing called Ubuntu. I found out that it was Debian based.
Logically or at least according to my own logic, if it's based on Debian perhaps I should just be
using Debian. So I switched from Ubuntu to Debian and for the longest time I was on just a Debian
system. What I really liked about Debian was that I could install a minimal system and then
blow it as I saw fit and to this day that is still how I run Linux operating systems on my computer.
I install a big system and then I start bloating it adding whatever I want. Currently I am on
Arch. Most if not all of my computers are running Arch with the exception of a Beaglebone which is
running Debian ARM and a Nokia N900 that is running MAMO which is also a Debian based distribution.
After I installed Arch, I began looking at programming languages that would allow me to do what
I wanted to do and what I wanted to do was automation, maybe make a graphical application to do
something I wanted to learn more about programming and I discovered the Python programming language
which I am still very fond of. So I was running programs in Python and at the time I was working for
proprietary software company in Petaluma, California. This was about 2006-2007.
And the Python code that I was teaching myself at home I found to be quite useful in the office
and my managers noticed that I was a more productive employee because I had this knowledge,
this knowledge of Python and I was able to do things in Python very rapidly, very quickly.
While the applications I was writing may not have been as fast as a C application or C++ application,
the application was written and running and doing what it was supposed to do and that is the
important part. So I was using this thing called Linux to make myself a more productive employee
and that is always a very good thing. At the time I was using various text editors to write
software. One of my favorites at the time was J-Edit and one of the reasons I liked J-Edit was that
it was cross-platform, it would run on Windows, Macintosh and Linux. And to me being able to use
the same text editor at home as I was using at work on a Windows machine or Macintosh really meant a
lot. It was very comforting and it was nice to know that all the keyboard shortcuts were going to be
the same and that the interface would mostly be the same and everything would be where I wanted it
to be. I got laid off and that's fine because I found a better job, it's totally awesome.
And I also discovered the Gini text editor and that's what really changed things for me
in programming, I think. The Gini text editor is a GTK-based editor, very lightweight,
but it still has a lot of features that I enjoyed, but it's still very lightweight, that is the key.
So I changed up from being a Windows user who wanted to play games to being a Linux user who
wanted to write code. My game of choice is the Gini text editor. When I have free time, I'm
going to hack out some code, something fun that I can show other people and will sort of show off
what can be done with Linux. And that is how I got into Linux and the Gini text editor and using
Arch and keeping things minimal. And next time I will tell you the tale of how I use Linux.
Thank you for your time. Well, that's my story and well, I'm sticking with it.
If you'd like to get in contact with me, I can be reached through email. My name is Jezra and
you can send an email to Jezra at Jezra.net. I'm vain enough to have my own site. What a jerk.
I also have a federated status.net instance, which is status.jezra.net and I'm on there as Jezra.
Fancy that. All right. You have yourself a one-ful evening day, week, month, year, millennium,
and I'll catch you on the flip side.
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